A young couple who say they were the victims of police violence for “walking while black” are calling on the mayors of Montreal and Plateau-Mont-Royal to take responsibility for “excessive force, abuse of power and racism.”

Both were given $444 tickets for making excessive noise.

At a news conference Saturday organized by the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR), Brian Mann and his girlfriend, who chose not to give her name for fear it could hamper her career, said they were walking down St-Laurent Blvd. near Roy St. on Saturday, April 7 at about 10 a.m., talking and laughing, when a police cruiser pulled alongside.

The two officers told the couple they were being too loud. Mann, who is 31, white and the executive director of Concordia University Television (CUTV), said he asked the officers if there was a law against talking and laughing. They responded they would decide what defines too loud, Mann said.

Saying she was fearful of their aggressive tone, Mann’s girlfriend, who is 34 and of Haitian descent, turned around to walk to her nearby home. The officers jumped out of the car and threw her against the hood of their vehicle, she said, then roughly searched and handcuffed her, and would not say why there were arresting her.

Once in the police cruiser, they asked her several times how many drugs she had taken, and if she was a drug addict. They seemed surprised to learn she had a good job and spoke English and French fluently, she said.

“I don’t think this could have happened if I was a white woman walking down the street with her boyfriend, I really doubt that they would have stopped me like that at 10:30 in the morning,” she said. “There was really zero reason for that to happen.”

Mann said he asked the police officers why there were arresting his girlfriend, and was told he would be arrested shortly. Two more police cars arrived, and Mann said three officers ran toward him, grabbed his arms, kicked him in the back of the knee, punched him in the face and knocked him to the ground. Handcuffed and restrained by his legs, he was then pepper sprayed, he said. As a result of the arrest, he suffered torn ligaments in his shoulder, and has reduced sensation in the back of his left hand.